I had two sessions at O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference in London in October 2016. It is the first #OReillySACon in London. A very good organized conference with plenty of great speakers and sessions. I can really recommend this conference and its siblings in other cities such as San Francisco or New York if you want to learn about good software architectures and new concepts, best practices and technologies. Some of the hot topics this year besides microservices are DevOps, serverless architectures and big data analytics.

I want to share the slide of my session about comparing open source frameworks, SaaS and Enterprise products regarding log analytics for distributed microservices:

Like every year, I attended JavaOne (part of Oracle World) in San Francisco in late September 2016. This is still one of the biggest conferences around the world for technical experts like developers and architects.

I planned to write a blog posts about new trends from the program, exhibition and chats with other attendees. Though, I can make it short: Besides focus on Java platform updates (Java 9, Java EE 8, etc.), I saw three hot topics which are highly related to each other: Microservices, Docker and Cloud. It felt like 80% of non-Java talks were about these three topics. The other 20% were Internet of Things (IoT), DevOps and some other stuff. Middleware was also a hot topic. Not always directly, but I was in several talks focusing on integration, orchestration of microservices, (IoT) gateways.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks 6 is a modern integration and service delivery platform ready for modern concepts such Mobile, Cloud, Internet of Things or Microservices. This article is no introduction to integration and service delivery platforms in general, but focuses on differentiators of BusinessWorks 6 compared to other integration solutions available on the market. If you want to see a general introduction to TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks 6, explaining its basic concepts and capabilities such as:

Relation to SOA, ESB and Microservices

Many TIBCO customers already ask how they can leverage Docker in combination with SOA, ESB and Microservices, and what TIBCO’s strategy is. I just want to refer to an article I published recently, it shows some insights about TIBCO’s future strategy from the Docker perspective:

In 2015, the middleware world focuses on two buzzwords: Docker and Microservices. Software vendors still sell products such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or Complex Event Processing (CEP) engines. How is this related?

Docker is a fascinating technology to deploy and distribute modules (middleware, applications, services) quickly and easily. Most people agree that Docker will change the future of software development in the next years. I will do another blog post about how Docker is related to TIBCO and how you can deploy and distribute Microservices with Docker and TIBCO products such as TIBCO EMS and BusinessWorks 6 easily.

Last week, I gave a talk at a German conference (Karlsruher Entwicklertag 2015) about Microservices. The following slide deck shows plenty of different technologies (e.g. REST, WebSockets), frameworks (e.g. Apache CXF, Apache Camel, Puppet, Docker) or tools (e.g. TIBCO BusinessWorks, API Exchange) to realize Microservices.

Abstract: How to Build Microservices

Microservices are the next step after SOA: Services implement a limited set of functions. Services are developed, deployed and scaled independently. This way you get shorter time to results and increased flexibility.

These days, it seems like everybody is talking about microservices. You can read a lot about it in hundreds of articles and blog posts, but my recommended starting point would be this article by Martin Fowler, which initiated the huge discussion about this new architectural concept. This article is about the challenges, requirements and best practices for creating a good microservices architecture, and what role an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) plays in this game.

Branding and Marketing: EAI vs. SOA vs. ESB vs. Microservices

Let’s begin with a little bit of history about Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Service Bus to find out why microservices have become so trendy.

Business Perspective – Open API and API Management

Open API represent the leading edge of a new business model, providing innovative ways for companies to expand brand value and routes to market, and create new value chains for intellectual property. In the past, SOA strategies mostly targeted internal users. Open APIs target mostly external partners.

This short video shows how you can integrate different technologies and enterprise software easily with TIBCO Businessworks (ESB).

Demo Content

The demo shows live development and integration of Salesforce (CRM), SAP (ERP) and Tibbr (TIBCO’s Social Enterprise Network).
Any other technology or application can be integrated in the same easy way with the same concepts. Visual development, mapping, testing and debugging is shown. No coding is required.

Video: Integration of Salesforce, SAP and Tibbr with TIBCO BusinessWorks